Asus has rather quietly introduced a new Geforce GTX 1080 STRIX A8G graphics card that should end up with somewhat lower clocks but still feature the same custom PCB and excellent DirectCU III cooler with Asus Aura RGB LED lighting.

Spotted by Techpowerup.com, the Asus GTX 1080 STRIX A8G will use the same custom PCB with 10-phase VRM, drawing power from a combination of 8-pin and 6-pin PCIe power connectors and use the same all-black DirectCU III cooler with five copper heatpipes, three 100mm fans, full-cover backplate and Aura RGB LED lighting.

The GTX 1080 STRIX A8G will work at a 1,670MHz GPU base and 1,809MHz GPU Boost clocks, which is lower than 1,759MHz GPU base and 1,898MHz GPU Boost clocks on the previously available GTX 1080 STRIX O8G version. The 8GB of GDDR5X memory, paired up with a 256-bit memory interface, remained at reference 10,010MHz.

The good side of the story is that the GTX 1080 STRIX A8G actually has a five to 10 percent lower price compared to the GTX 1080 O8G version. Currently, Newegg.com has the GTX 1080 STRIX A8G listed at US $609.99 ($579.99 after $30 rebate), while the GTX 1080 STRIX O8G sells for US $679.99.

We've now had a chance to check out the first picture of Asus' GTX 1050 Ti Expedition graphics card, leaked ahead of the rumored October 25th launch for both Nvidia's upcoming GP107-based graphics cards, the GTX 1050 Ti and the GTX 1050.

Although there are no details regarding the actual clocks of the new Asus GTX 1050 Ti Expedition, the pictured box, spotted by Videocardz.com, shows the dual-fan cooler that Asus has decided to use on this version as well as confirms that it will be coming with 4GB of GDDR5 memory. The source also suggests that it will have an additional 6-pin PCIe power connector so we can expect a factory-overclocked GPU.

As rumored earlier, the Geforce GTX 1050 Ti will be based on a fully-enabled GP107 GPU with 768 CUDA cores, 48 TMUs and 32 ROPs and come with 4GB of GDDR5 memory on a 128-bit memory interface. According to earlier leaked performance figures, the GTX 1050 Ti should offer performance similar to the GTX 960, which also means that it could fit the minimum required specification of the Oculus Rift VR headset.

Asus is also rumored to release the Strix version of the GTX 1050 Ti which should end up with a different cooler as well as a higher factory-overclock.

Both the GTX 1050 Ti and the GTX 1050 are expected to launch on October 25th, with rumored MSRP set at US $149 and US $119, respectively. There are also rumors that AMD plans a price cut on some of its Polaris-based RX 400 series graphics cards in order to compete with Nvidia. The entry-level and mainstream graphics card market will definitely heat up in during this month.

During a press event before the IFA tradeshow in Berlin this week (September 4th – 7th), Asus announced two 2-in-1 detachable notebooks that take direct aim at Microsoft’s Surface Pro lineup.

In fact, the new devices are so similar in design they appear to be bordering on copyright infringement, should Microsoft find it necessary to produce patents for the original design.

Asus 2-in-1 detachables with 12.6-inch IPS display panels

The Asus Transformer 3 and Transformer 3 Pro were originally announced at an ASUS Zen press conference in late May, when the company signaled its entry into direct competition with Microsoft over the Surface Pro market.

Both devices feature a kickstand extending back 155-degrees for various angle adjustments, just like the 150-degree kickstands on every Microsoft Surface. The company will sell detachable keyboards that clip into place, just like the Smart Keyboards introduced for any iPad 2 or later Apple tablet and the Type Cover for any Surface device.

The Transformer 3 Pro will ship with a backlit Cover Keyboard offering “laptop-grade 1.4mm key travel,” while the Transformer 3 will ship with a non-backlit Transformer Sleeve Keyboard also offering 1.4mm key travel. Both keyboard types are available in Stone, Charcoal, Taupe and Amber.

Transformer 3 Pro T303UA (Skylake, air-cooled)

The device features a 12.6-inch IPS wide-gamut display with 3K/WQHD+ (2880x1920p) resolution (275ppi) at a 3:2 aspect ratio and covers 121 percent of the sRGB color space. The display is capable of up to 450 nits brightness and covers an 80 percent screen-to-body ratio. It also includes 16GB of LPDDR3 2133MHz memory, up to a 512GB SATA 3 M.2 SSD or up to a 1TB PCI-E 3.0 x4 NVMe SSD.

The company said in May that the Transformer 3 Pro will feature more powerful Skylake chips from the previous generation, while the standard Transformer 3 series will feature ultra-low voltage Kaby Lake chips with a fanless design. Some early reviews have pointed out that the Transformer 3 Pro body has venting at the top while the Transformer 3 does not, indicating that the premium model is air cooled while the other uses heatsinks.

The company’s official product page lists Intel’s 6th-gen Skylake series Core i5 6200U (2.3GHz base, 2.4GHz Turbo) and Core i7 6500U (2.5GHz base, 3.1GHz Turbo) as the two configurations. There one model currently available for pre-order with a Core i5 6200U / 512GB / 8GB RAM for $1255.

As for peripherals, there is a 13-megapixel rear camera, a 2-megapixel IR front camera, Bluetooth 4.1, 802.11ac Wi-Fi, one USB 3.0 port, one HDMI port, one Thunderbolt 3 port, multi-format memory card slot, dual 2W stereo speakers with microphone, USB Type-C port for power and a 39Wh lithium-polymer battery. The tablet without keyboard measures 8.35mm thick and weighs 1.74lbs (790g). Asus will price this device starting at $999 for the base model.

Transformer 3 T305CA (Kaby Lake, fanless)

This device has the same 12.6-inch IPS wide-gamut 2880x1920p display as the Transformer 3 Pro, with up to 8GB of DDR3L memory at a lower 1866MHz memory speed and up to a 512GB SATA 3 M.2 SSD. As for peripherals, it includes the same 8-megapixel rear and 5-megapixel IR front cameras, Bluetooth 4.1, 802.11ac Wi-Fi and dual 2W stereo speakers with microphone, but only includes a 3.5mm audio port and a single USB Type-C port for charging and data.

While the official product page does not list processor specifications, Asus CEO Johnny Shih said during the Computex keynote speech that they would indeed be Intel Kaby Lake chips. According to UltrabookReview, the device is built on Intel Core fanless hardware and will use Intel’s Kaby Lake Y-series Core M chips inside a 4.5W TDP.

The tablet without keyboard measures just 6.9mm thick and weighs 1.53lbs (695g) and it uses a 38.5Wh lithium-polymer battery. The device is expected to be priced at $799 for a 256GB storage option bundled with keyboard, with pricing for the 512GB option coming at a later date. Sources suggest it should become available by the end of the year.

While the Kaby Lake processor should add a small 12 to 19 percent performance improvement over similar Skylake chips, along with additional media features like native HEVC main10 decoding for 4K video playback, the other notable difference between the Transformer 3 Pro and the Transformer 3 appears to be the lack of an additional USB port and HDMI output, meaning any 4K display output will be limited to just one screen at a time.

Transformer Mini T102HA

At the entry-level of its detachable notebook lineup, the company is also releasing the Transformer Mini T102A to serve a follow-up to the Transformer Book T100HA and Transformer Book T100s.

This device features a smaller, 10.1-inch 1280x800p display with 16:10 aspect ratio and will use a quad-core Intel Atom x5-Z8350 Cherry Trail processor, accompanied by up to 4GB of RAM and up to 128GB of eMMC flash storage.

The tablet without keyboard measures 8.2mm thick and weighs 1.2lbs (544g) without keyboard, or 1.74lbs (789g) with keyboard. It also features an lithium-polymer battery with up to 11 hours of movie playback time. There is one model currently available for pre-order with an Intel Atom Z8350 / 4GB RAM / 128GB SSD for $423.72. They are expected to become more widely available starting in September bundled with the keyboard cover for around $500.

Microsoft Surface Pro 4 for comparison

By comparison, the Microsoft Surface Pro 4 has a 12.3-inch display with a 2736x1824 resolution (267ppi) and 3:2 aspect ratio. It also includes up to 16GB of LPDDR3 1866MHz memory and up to a 1TB PCI-E 3.0 x4 NVMe SSD.

Asus has decided to move away from the boxy design on to a round one with its next-generation Zenwatch device, the Zenwatch 3.

Powered by Qualcomm's latest Snapdragon Wear 2100 chipset, with a quad-core Cortex-A7 CPU part clocked at 1.2GHz and an Adreno 304 GPU, paired up with 512MB of RAM and 4GB of internal storage, the Asus Zenwatch 3 should pack enough punch to power the round 1.39-inch AMOLED 400x400 resolution display, which adds up to 287 PPI. The screen is protected with Corning Gorilla Glass so scratches should be minimal.

The design of the Asus Zenwatch 3 is very elegant with a rose gold ring making the bezel of the screen. While it will be available in three color choices, Gunmetal, Silver and Rose Gold, the rose gold ring will remain on all three color choices. It also comes with three buttons on the side which should, at least according to Asus, provide a more intuitive functionality.

The chassis of the Zenwatch 3, which is 9.95mm thick, is made of stainless steel and there will be a couple of strap choices, from rubber to leather, lacking only a good stainless steel one. It will also have an IP67 certification, so it should hold out in up to 1m deep water.

Asus has also prepared more than 50 watch faces with support for customizable widgets and it will run on Android Wear 2.0 OS.

While its 340mAh battery probably won't give it a full two days of life, Asus has included support for the Asus Hypercharge technology, which should charge it from 0% to 60% in just 15 minutes.

According to details provided by Asus, the Zenwatch 3 will launch later this year with a price set at €229.

Today is the big launch for 60 new Geforce 10-series notebooks, and according to Mark Aevermann, the company’s Geforce Notebook Product Lead, there is going to be a pretty significant performance leap over the previous Maxwell generation launched just under two years ago.

“If you take the very same notebook that was available in Maxwell and you compare it to the same notebook with Pascal, you see a 70 percent increase in performance,” said Aevermann.

Nvidia has said that for a very long time, the company has wanted to take the full Geforce GTX desktop GPU experience and bring it to notebooks without creating watered-down “M” versions. This year marks the first time the company will be bringing the full Geforce 10-series desktop chips to notebooks without creating a second notebook-optimized hardware lineup. The only differences will be some slight clockspeed adjustments and the way in which the GPUs are configured with drivers and notebook settings – with the exception of the GTX 1070.

“They’re the same chip [as in their same-name desktop GPUs], they’re configured a bit differently,” said Aevermann. “We’re in a more constrained environment so we have to do everything we can possibly do to squeeze out performance.”

Any Geforce GTX 1080 equipped notebooks will feature the same chip and frequencies as their desktop counterparts but – GP104 GPU, 2560 CUDA cores, a 1,607MHz base clock, a 1,733MHz Boost clock and 8GB of GDDR5X memory (10Gbps).

The Geforce GTX 1070 for notebooks gets an interesting change – the same GP104 GPU, but with a core upgrade from 1,920 to 2,048 cores, a lower 1443MHz base clock (instead of 1,645MHz) and a lower 1,645MHz Boost clock (instead of 1,683MHz).

At the press event in Bangkok, Thailand, Nvidia explained that having more cores but at lower clock frequencies gives better power efficiency for thin and light notebook form factors. Some are claiming that gaming performance will be within 10 percent of desktop GPU equivalents, but this will vary based on refresh rate and other factors. Of course, many Pascal gaming notebooks will also offer OC adjustments that should allow GPU offsets in excess of 300MHz.

Any gaming notebook equipped with these three Nvidia Geforce 10-series GPUs will be VR-capable out of the box, with Nvidia claiming there is simply no reason a watered-down “M” series lineup anymore. “There is a gaming notebook for every gamer,” said Aevermann. “Every major manufacturer will be releasing gaming notebooks with GTX 10 GPUs inside.”

Xotic PC has teamed up with MSI, Gigabyte Sager, ASUS and other leading gaming laptop manufacturers to add additional high-performance customizations and visual personalizations to dozens of new Geforce 10-series notebooks either now available or currently up for pre-order. Some of these notebooks even offer Geforce GTX 1080 SLI, which we thought was very impressive minus the price tag.

Since early June, we have been closing windows on our summer advent calendar waiting for the Snapdragon 821 based Asus Zenfone 3 Deluxe. Now it seems that the Asus Santa Claws is visting Malaysia first.

It is a pity, because we were especially interested in the Asus Zenfone 3 Deluxe and its 256GB UFS 2.0 storage. It comes with 6GB RAM and Snapdragon 821 SoC. It seems that it will sell for MYR 3,299 which is USD $820.

The Asus Zenfone 3 Deluxe with Snapdragon 820, 6GB RAM and 64GB storage will sell for MYR 2,599 or USD $645. The ZenFone 3 Ultra 6.8-inch phablet will come at the same price but the size of that phone sounds incredible as this is almost as big as the popular Nexus 7 first $199 tablet in 2013. The Zenfone 3 Ultra 6.8-inch phablet comes with the Snapdragon 852 SoC.

The Asus Zenfone 3 laser a 5.5 inch full HD phone with 4GB Ram and a Snapdragon 430 will sell for MYR 999 ($250). The Asus Zenfone 3 Max featuring Snapdragon 615, 3GB RAM and 4,100mAh should be selling for a fab MYR 799 ($200).

The last but by no means the least are the vanilla Zenfone 3 models. They come in two sizes. The 5.2-inch version, with 4GB RAM, 64GB storage and Snapdragon 625 will sell for MYR 1,499 ($370). The larger 5.5-inch version will sell for 1,699 / $420 USD and has the same spec.

If you bought a GeForce GTX 970 then it looks like Nvidia will owe you $30 after agreeing to a preliminary settlement of a class action over some marketing of the card.

The case is a set of 15 separate class-action lawsuits, filed starting in February 2015, that were condensed into one suit in the US District Court for the Northern District of California.

The plaintiffs filed complaints against Nvidia and graphics card manufacturers Asus, EVGA and Gigabyte, claiming that the companies misled consumers about the hardware specifications of the GTX 970.

Specifically the GTX 970 claimed to have 4 GB of video memory when it had 3.5 GB of RAM, with the remaining 0.5 GB being a much slower "spillover segment" that is decoupled from the main RAM.

It was supposed to have 64 render output processors when it only had 56 and 2,048 KB L2 cache, whereas the card actually has a 1,792 KB L2 cache

The plaintiffs wrote in the amended class-action complaint that Nvidia had engaged in a scheme to mislead consumers nationwide about the characteristics, qualities, uses, and benefits of the GTX 970.

Nvidia and its co-defendants first tried to have the case dismissed on multiple occasions and is not saying anything about the settlement.

Under the terms of the settlement, Nvidia and its partners are not admitting any liability or wrongdoing, but have agreed to pay $30 for each GTX 970 unit to members of the settlement class.

The $30 figure is based on a figure alleged by the plaintiffs. It was based on the fact that the average retail price of a GTX 970 was approximately $350. So they should have expected to receive 12.5 percent of $350, or $43.75, as compensation — if the case had gone to trial and the plaintiffs had won.

The real winners were the lawyers who collected $1.3 million in attorneys’ fees and expenses. Nvidia have also agreed to pay incentive awards of up to $25,000 in total to the 23 named plaintiffs.

Once everything is paid Nvidia, Asus, EVGA and Gigabyte will have lighter bank accounts. Nvidia has sold a lot of GTX 970s since launching the card in September 2014 and the GTX 970 is the baseline GPU for compatibility with virtual reality headsets such as the Oculus Rift and HTC Vive.

A research note from IDC said that PC shipments in the EMEA region accounted for 16.1 million units in the second quarter of this year.

That’s up by 4.7 percent compared to the same quarter last year.

But overall the PC industry is shrouded in gloom because overall Western Europe showed a fall of minus 0.8 percent, while Central and Eastern Europe and the Middle East and Africa showed drop of 8.5 percent and 13.3 percent respectively.

Notebook shipments in Western Europe rose by 4.1 percent in the quarter, with the commercial sector showing a 10.5 percent increase on the same quarter last year.

IDC said while Windows 10 sales were “accelerating”, Microsoft is still unable to drive large renewals.

Brexit is unlikely to help things in the future with vendors changing their prices and large businesses become more cautious.

Malini Paul, an analyst at IDC, said inventory levels in some channels were high with products moving slowly.

The top five vendors in the quarter were HP, Lenovo, Dell, Asus, and Acer. Apple took sixth place.

Asus has released its second quarter product range including the ZenFone 3 family products, Transformer 3 Pro 2-in-1, and ZenPad 3S 10 tablet.

If you live in Taiwan, you can pick up a 5.2 inch Zenfone 3 for $248. It has a Qualcomm Snapdragon 625 CPU, 16-megapixel main camera, and a 2,650mAh battery, with 3GB RAM/32GB ROM, while the 5.5-inch ZenFone 3 (ZE552KL) also features a Snapdragon 625 but supports 4GB RAM/64GB ROM with a 3,000mAh battery.

The new family products also include a 6.8-inch ZenFone 3 Ultra, priced at $559.39, and will be available starting July 27. The large-size ZenFone 3 Ultra sports a Qualcomm Snapdragon 652 CPU with 4GB RAM/64GB ROM.

The 5.7-inch ZenFone 3 Deluxe has three flavors. The first two models both feature a Qualcomm Snapdragon 820 CPU but with one having a built-in memory capacity of a 4GB RAM/32GB ROM priced at $497.20, and another with 6GB RAM/64GB ROM at $559.39.

The third model is powered by a Qualcomm Snapdragon 821 CPU with 6GB RAM/256GB ROM for the magical price of $777. Dubbed the ZenFone 3 Deluxe series products they should be available in some designated markets from August.

The ZenPad 3S 10 (Z500M) features a 9.7-inch QXGA IPS display with a built-in Tru2Lift TV chip and 4GB RAM. The new tablet will be available in August, priced at $341.73. The 12.6-inch Transformer 3 Pro 2-in-1 will also come with a number of variants, powered by Intel Core i5 or Core i7 CPUs, with prices ranging from $1,274 to $1,958.

Asus previously relied on deals with Intel and was a champion of its Atom series. All these are Qualcomm chipsets and are supposed to go like the clappers.

Asus ZenFone is a good reliable brand of smarphone for a good price which has had a bit of a bad rep for supporting Intel’s Atom a little too long.

However now Intel is out of the market, Asus’s freshly improved Asus Zenfone 3 Deluxe appears to be headed to becoming the most powerful Android smartphone in the market.

We saw the ZenFone 3 at Computex, and most of the specs are the same. But the top-of-the-line ZenFone 3 Deluxe is going to get Qualcomm's new Snapdragon 821 chipset.

This means that the entire spec will be a 2.4GHz Snapdragon 821 chip with Adreno 530 graphics, 6GB of RAM, 256GB of storage (expandable via microSD cards), a 23-megapixel rear camera, 8-megapixel selfie cam, a 5.7-inch, a 1080p Super AMOLED screen, and a 3,000mAh battery.It will have dual-SIM support, Quick Charge 3.0 technology, laser autofocus, fingerprint sensor and an all-metal design with an invisible antenna.

Qualcomm told us that the Snapdragon 821 builds upon the 820’s features, but provides a 10 percent performance increase. Its Kryo quad-core CPU runs at 2.4GHz this will make the ZenFone 3 Delux the fastest on the market.

As you might expect the ZenFone 3 Deluxe will be a bit pricier – $780. But for that spec, it is pretty good value. The two other variants will have the respectable 2.15GHz Snapdragon 820, and 6GB of RAM and 64GB of storage or 4GB with 32GB storage. These will be worth $560 for the bigger one and $500 for the smaller one.